Involution: A Worker Inquiry Amid China's Youth Unemployment Wave

A fascinating, intimate window onto China's intensifying youth employment crisis

China's hypercompetitive job market is stunting and distorting the lives of an entire generation. Forced into a cutthroat doom loop, the people interviewed in Involution highlight how they are pitted against their colleagues, assigned pointless or impossible tasks, and warped by hostile environments. In response to an antisocial work culture, forms of passive resistance have become endemic.

Through conversations with young workers from across China, the Gonglao Collective paints a haunting picture of involution's chokehold on young lives.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Verso
Published: 10/20/2026
ISBN: 9781836742951
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.81lbs